The Foreign Office was not forthcoming about the ongoing negotiations with the US over the past seven months after the suspension of the Nato supply route till its resumption on the 3rd of July. Many a time we had to go to the website of the State Department or wait for interviews or statements made by US officials to figure out what was going on, said several journalists surveyed by Business Recorder.
What amazed local journalists is that instead of having a press conference after the decision to resume Nato supplies, Khar invited a handful of her favourite journalists to provide what she termed as background briefing on the talks and resumption of Nato supplies.
In contrast, the State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland was forthcoming in her briefings to the US media soon after "Statement by Secretary Clinton on her call with Pakistani Foreign Minister Khar" was placed on their website in which Clinton officially disclosed that Pakistan is reopening the Nato supply routes without charging any transit fee. The Defence Committee of the Cabinet approved the reopening of the supply routes after Secretary Clinton's statement was on the website.
Revelations of the negotiations were made by the Americans and it was US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta who disclosed that Pakistan was demanding an exorbitant amount of $5000 per Nato container as transit fee. The then Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar and Interior Minister Rehman Malik both publicly claimed that ground and air routes were blocked for Nato supplies after the decision of the DCC but US Ambassador Cameron Munter revealed that Nato supplies continued uninterrupted through Pakistan airspace.
And what was disturbing is that the final draft of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security for reengagement with US, Nato and Isaf, was available with Ambassador Munter before Pakistan's political leadership was aware of the proposals - information that the US Ambassador shared with media. During weekly press briefing on Thursday, the Foreign Office spokesman Moazzam Ahmad Khan, when asked repeatedly whether or not any agreement was signed between the two countries to end the seven-month long blockade of the Nato supplies, expressed his complete ignorance. "I am not really in a position to give you a very specific answer on that," he responded, adding that as per his understanding the two sides were in the process of making some arrangements to facilitate the process.
However, this confusion was removed by US Deputy Chief of Mission Richard Hoagland who while talking to media disclosed that no new agreement has been signed between the two countries for the reopening of the Nato supplies and that there was no need for any such accord. "We've resumed our relations from the point where we had left in November last year," he added.
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